1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for finding the centroid coordinates of figures. More particularly, it concerns a measuring device which can measure the centroid coordinates of plane figures by tracing their contours.
2. Background Information
In the prior art, when finding a centroid of a linear figure a-g-f-e-d-c-b-a as shown in FIG. 3, for example, the figure is divided into sub-figures having known figure centroids, such as triangles a-b-g, b-g-f, and b-f-h and rectangle c-d-e-h, or a square, geometrical moments of their areas are individually calculated and summed up, and the summed moment is divided by the total area or the linear figure.
When finding the centroid of a curved figure as shown in FIG. 4, for example, the only way to obtain its centroid is by dividing the figure into a multiple or approximate triangles and applying the same method as above.
However, when finding linear figures such as those of FIG. 3, the prior method takes a long time because the amount of calculations increase with the number of sides, although it can obtain an accurate centroid.
Further the prior method can hardly obtain an accurate centroid for a curved figure as shown in FIG. 4 because it uses the approximation method. To obtain an accurate centroid, the figure has to divided more finely. This is practically impossible to do manually.
In view of solving the foregoing problems of the prior art, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device for finding the centroid coordinates of figures that can calculate the centroids at a single time of measurement of the figure and can display the calculated centroid on the figure.